[MUD-Dev] Battle Systems

[Philip Loguinov -- Draymoor]

Ok, i've seen a lot of good battle systems on muds. However, they always
seemed very automated to me.
You attack a mob, then trade blows every round, perhaps casting spells also.
Many times (especially with lower level stock spells), damage spells are a
complete joke. Sure, the higher level ones are wonderfull against players,
but the lower ones aren't any good(Is this because if it were more powerfull
it wouldn't be fair on players?).
Anyway, thats not the only problem i've seen. A complete lack of combat
tactics. Sure, there are tactics involved with player killing (tracking,
innitiating combat, fleeing), but in the actual battle, its a matter of
trading more powerfull blows and lossing more hitpoints and being faster
with skills/spells and lag then the other person. There is skill, but very
little tactics.
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Thats my premise, here is an idea i would like to bounce of you guys.

My new battle system is based less on the combat round as the mud sees it,
and more on a psudo initiative/action lag based system.

Basicly, get rid of the auto attack function in a battle.
If two players initiate combat, then don't do anything, nothing will happen.
They will dance arround each other and thats it.

To attack with your primary you would type "hit."
there will be an option to toggle between hit attacking with your secondary
weapon as well and using "hit2" to attack with it.

after the attack is made, you get set into a lag state. Basicly, its the
recovery from your attack, and initiative. once you are out of lag, you get
a message telling you.

Spells can have casting times, as well as lag periods. So can some skills.
weapons can have speeds (It takes longer to recover after using a halberd
then it does after stabbing with a dagger)
Parry as a command here.
if you want to parry or dodge, you type it in and you do so until you enter
in a differant battle command.

Instead of multiple blows per round, what  you get is lag improvement.
As you improve with the specific weapon, you also get faster with it, which
results in less lag, which has the same effect as multiple blows.
Haste and Slow spells act by affecting lag for everything you do.
Etc.

Thats my system. Here are the things i know about it.
-It should help improve battle by slowing things down a bit.
    Every blow counts a lot more then before. It is especially
    usefull if you are a mage, or a pacifist. As a mage, you can just
    try to maintain a defence while casting spells. Or if you're a
    pacifist, you just flee. Why would a pacifist, when attacked,
    attack back?
-It does place a lot more emphasis on connection speed.
    If your lagged, or drop link, it will be worse then with the
    normal system, but that can be solved by common sense
    (If your lagged so bad, why not stay in a safe area?) and
    stopping battle with linkdead players.
-With this system, we can make mobs a lot smarter, easier.
    Using fightprogs, we can script their actions. A smarter
    mob is 10 times more deadly then a dumb mob.
    A couple examples:    In my mud, a mob is set with what
    skills/spells/abilities it has and how good they are.
    With a good scripting language for them, it would be
    possible to make strategies and combo moves.
    If the mob sees that it is fighting a mage, and the mage is
    casting a spell, it would try to disrupt the spell. It might
    identify the person, then attack with spells that the person
    is weak to and avoid those that he is strong to. It cast
    maladictions and then follow up with exploitations
    (Make player weak to fire, then fireball). Etc, etc


I'd like to hear what people think of this. Would this work?
Could i make it better somehow? How about my assessment
of normal mud combat, is it accurate?

Thanks for reading through this, i'm not very blunt sometimes:P

-Philip Loguinov.
    -Draymoor Spellcleaver




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